The subject title (minus the parenthesis) is the title for this poem I wrote a couple days ago in reflection about certain ideas presented in “the twighlight of the idols” which I had just finished.
Instinct, like a
bowel movement
must be let out,
must pin the superego,
to get ‘er done.
This struggle brings
the animal out of us,
casualties die martyrs
to Darwin’s maker,
“there is a time for war”
said the preacher,
not a time “of” war,
a time “for” war. A
time to purge ourselves
with struggle, to find again
our resilience:
that we are
animals— deified by
opposable thumbs.
And Greeks
obsessed with the
pregnant phallus come
to a time of testing,
bursting forth life gods,
guardians of nations,
the fighters who make
room for poets to see
vulvas in roses and rock formations.
Mother nature, a cruel nun
striking hands with rulers
giving tests first and then
lessons. Color
struggle looking over
brown picket fences,
the dictatorship of the proletariat
come long last, power
changes hefty hands; a slut
for all who prove themselves
worthy. Empires miscarried
fall pitiful into dirty
toilets, joining the carnage
with the sewage
and nations
like yogurt
seem to
have an expiration date.
Sinners lay down their
swords for saints to
take them up and slay them
there, the stories of it all
boil up to power and
this struggle is our
salvation for
when
we need strength then
we become strong.
And wrong and right
are secondary—
power is the engine that
drives people like
brute beasts gridlocked on
tax reform, antlers locked
battling for Mona Lisa,
for Monica Lewinsky,
driven by desire for how
it must feel to be
on top.
Like animals deified by
value systems,
architecture, forks and
spoons and guns,
rationality, language,
opposable thumbs
and I bet you
have never thought
of how much
religion deifies us.
Our belief in God
makes us gods
as we suck the yellow
blood from beneath
Native feet and
delicately wipe our lips.
As we patrol oily
middle eastern blood;
Abu Grhaib blurs lines
of distinction of
who the terrorists
are. As we see
the animal in
Hiroshima and
grimace and worship
before what
we are capable of.
Instinctual self
is who we minimize,
preferring to be philosophers
and poets, scientists and
presidents but
it is pure instinctual
self which keeps us
alive, makes room for
prophets to see God
in everything, we thinkers
are indebted to the beast
inside us, the beast inside
others, the animals we
call our mothers and fathers,
driven to fuck. To fuck
like bears fuck and tigers
fuck and apes fuck, who
would’ve been just friends
if not driven from within
to fucking make us happen
bursting forth life gods
who struggle every day of their
life to find what star they
came from making messy
bowel movements, so much
relief,
it is pleasure
to let instinct save
our necks
and wipe afterwards
as if we
had something
to do with it and we read
in the Law of Moses that
“God is a man of war”
and also that
“we are made in God’s image”
like when fighting
we reach the zenith
of godhood
when my romantic self
thinks just the opposite
begging for
“swords to be beaten into